


Of Time Travel and Unforseen Consequences

by Quiet_Shadow



Series: Summer Days Prompts [15]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Black Hermione Granger, Female Harry Potter, Female Neville Longbottom, Female Ron Weasley, Gen, Genderbending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-10 21:07:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15300051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quiet_Shadow/pseuds/Quiet_Shadow
Summary: ”When Hermione told us there’d be consequences to that whole time jumping thing, that wasn’t what I had in mind.”Or Harry, Ron and Hermione meet on the Hogwarts Express for the second time around, and there are a few glaring changes to the previous timeline...





	Of Time Travel and Unforseen Consequences

**Author's Note:**

> Because I like playing with both time-travel plots and genderbender. :p

Harry waited in silence in the empty compartment, slowly counting seconds until it was the right time. Harry wasn’t nervous… well, perhaps a little. Things were already so different; the odds that Ron would make it on time and be himself were slim to say the least. Or that he would be the Ron Harry knew for that matter. So perhaps Harry had gotten cold feet and avoided meeting the Weasleys on Platform 9/4, presenting to head directly for the train compartment when Harry and Ron had met the first time around, as it was there designated meeting point should they be unable to get in contact before Hogwarts – which, sadly, had been the case.

What if Ron didn’t come? What if Harry was alone to face everything alone? What if…

The compartment door opened.

”When Hermione told us there’d be consequences to that whole time jumping thing, that wasn’t what I had in mind.”

Never mind; that was Ron Weasley alright – even if he couldn’t remember his best friend’s voice being so high even as a pre-teen. Harry lifted his head and started to smile. “Hey, Ron! Long time no…” Harry trailed off and opened wide eyes. Still in the doorway, the redhead did the same. There was a long silence as both friends took in the changes.

“… Harry?” Ron tried tentatively. “That’s really you, mate?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” Harry replied on the same tone before shaking her head. “Oh bloody hell, you too?”

Ron shrugged helplessly. “Well, yeah. You wouldn’t happen to have seen Hermione yet? I would like to have a word with her about potential consequences. And I’m also crossing my fingers and hoping she suffered them too!”

“No, I’ve not -- seen her, I mean. Come on, enter and close the door behind you, it’ll be more discreet. I… think we have a lot of catching up to do.” That was quite the understatement. Harry didn’t know if he should laugh or cry at this point. It was just so… so ridiculous. “Nice pigtails, by the way. Trying to imitate Susan Bones?”

Ron blushed. “Ha ha, very funny,” he groused – no, SHE groused. “Mom insisted for doing my hair this morning and… well, I didn’t have the heart to refuse her.” It could have sounded lame, but Harry nodded in sympathy and shared comprehension. Mrs Weasley may be alive and well right now, but they had still lost her in the other timeline and her loss had rested heavily on Ron and Harry both. “But never mind me,” Ron added as she sat down across Harry. “You… do look rather well. Did your Muggles turn out nicer because you were a girl, _Henrietta_?”

Harry gave her friend a look. “You knew and you were still surprised to see I was a girl too?”

Ron winced. “Well, yes and no. I mean, I knew you were a girl since there was that whole Girl Who Lived thing instead of the Boy Who Lived – but that was in assuming the ritual worked and you had actually landed in this mess with me. I was kinda afraid I was alone and just ended in some weird dimension.”

“What would you have done if I hadn’t reacted then?” Harry asked curiously.

“Invented a story on the spot?” Ron proposed. The redhead tilted her head. “I dunno. Even knowing you’d be a girl, I kept imagining you as the boy I knew, just with long hair instead. Silly of me, right?”

“Not really,” Harry smiled. “I could have been, mind you. I’m already considering lucky nobody will keep telling me I look like my mother but with my father’s eyes.” She looked a bit like her mother, that much was true, but she still held enough resemblance to her father that she stood out at her own person for once. It wasn’t a bad feeling.

“Too bad, you would have made a stunning fellow redhead; we could have adopted you as a Weasley right away.”

Harry laughed. “The chances for that were very slim to begin with; from what I remember from Muggle school, black hair are a dominant gene; red hair are recessive. That means that unless one of my paternal grandparents was also a redhead, I couldn’t logically end up with red hair.”

“Actually, it isn’t impossible you could have been a redhead. Genetics are hard to fully explain and there is a thing such as atavism – genes skipping a generation or two before expressing themselves,” a new but extremely familiar voice piped in, making both girls jump; they hadn’t heard the door slide. They turned and stared.

“Hermione?! That’s you?!”

Ron’s mouth dropped open. "Black? How can you be black?!"

"Ron, we're girls now, so why would Hermione not be black?" Harry sighed.

"I thought she'd be a boy, if she had to be any different!"

"Oh, I suppose it was a possibility as well," Hermione acknowledged, wild curls bouncing around her head as she sauntered inside and waved her wand, making the door lock securely behind her. The two neo-girls exchanged a gaze; why hadn’t they thought of that? Hermione passed a hand in her hair; they seemed even bushier than Harry and Ron could remember. "One I'm glad to have dodged, all things considered. I can’t imagine how the two of you coped."

"Oh yeah, lucky you," Ron groused. "That doesn't explain why you're black -- or why we're even girls to begin with. Right, Harry?"

"It's all a matter of probabilities, Ron," Hermione sighed as she sat heavily next to the redhead. "The Muggles call it the butterfly effect."

"What does a butterfly have to do with...?"

"Never mind; it's a concept related to chaos theory and I'm not in the mood to go over it in details. Simply put, everything that happens depends on a sensitive equilibrium and the smallest change that happens can lead up to large differences in the repetition of those events. You’re following me?”

“I think so? But what does the butterfly…?”

“Forget about the butterfly!” Hermione snapped. Ron and Harry exchanged a look; they couldn’t remember Hermione ever having such a short temper. The dark-skinned girl huffed. “Anyway, when we accomplished that ritual to go backward in time, we made… I think I’m going to go with ‘ripples’,” she said after a moment. “Yes, ripples. Basically, we threw a stone into a still pond and the ripples changed the aspect of the pond.”

“But the ripples stop eventually, no?” Harry pointed out, eyebrows furrowed.

“That they do,” Hermione nodded, “but we and the world at large have already been affected by them. We’re now back in the still pond, but the additional stone at the bottom already changed its basic aspect; it’s not exactly the same pond anymore.”

“Alright,” Ron said after a moment. “That still doesn’t explain why you’re black, though.”

Hermione sighed. “Did you listen when Harry tried to explain genetics? The same thing applies to me. One of my grandfathers was black, thus I always had the potential to be born with a darker skin tone. This time around, it happened.”

“Oh.” A long silence followed as Ron tried to absorb the idea, Harry looked out of the window at the rolling countryside and Hermione made herself more comfortable in her seat. “I suppose that ripple thing explain why I couldn’t find Scabbers at the Burrow.”

Harry grimaced while Hermione inhaled. She had expected it, really; if Ron had been able to find the rat, Sirius would have been out of Azkaban by now; her friend wouldn’t have failed on that.

“Right,” Hermione sighed. “I think we need to list off everything we know to have changed from our original timeline and see if there is anything that could come and bite us in the ass if we’re not careful. And perhaps you can tell me more about yourselves as well?”

“Whatever for? You know everything there is to know about us already, no?” Harry asked dubiously.

Hermione gave him a look. “I knew everything I needed to know about Harry James Potter and Ronald Bilius Weasley; I know next to nothing about Henrietta Lily Potter and…” she blinked. “Well, I don’t even know how you’re supposed to be called anymore, Ron!”

Ron’s face went as red as her hair. “… Rosamonda. Rosamonda Cedrella. Everyone call me Rosie, though.”

Hermione and Harry traded a look. “That’s… not so bad, actually,” Harry coughed. “It certainly sounds nicer than ‘Henrietta’.” She had fully expected a flower name and sometimes wondered if it wouldn't have been nicer. Then again, probably not.

“Yeah, perhaps, but at least you can use Harry as a nickname without anyone looking at you weird,” Ron mumbled, crossing her arms over her chest. “And I’ll spare you the details about Aunt Muriel. Do you have any idea how freaky it is to have her boast that I look just like her at the same age?”

Hermione patted Ron’s back in comfort. “Did you find any advantage to being a girl, though?”

“Well,” Ron hesitated. “Fred and George don’t try to prank me half as much. And Percy is less of a prat, I guess. And I actually get new clothes,” she added with no small amount of wonder. “Not new, new, you know, we still don't have a lot of money, but I get clothes that aren’t hand-me down from my brothers." Then he pouted. "Of course, it's mainly girly dresses and Mom has a weird fixation on girls needing to wear pink, but it's still... nice? Different, but nice," she nodded to herself.

"Same thing for me," Harry pointed out. She was grinning, but it wasn't a nice grin. "I guess an overweight jerk bullying his boy cousin can be chalked up to 'Boys will be Boys' by the neighbors and the Dursleys, but a boy hitting his girl cousin? Suddenly it's not socially acceptable at all. Talk about double standard," she snorted.

"From the grin, I take you milked it for whatever it was worth?" Hermione asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Of course," Harry waved. "It took a little maneuvering, but I got to get Dudley's second bedroom a lot earlier this time. It's surprising how much you can get out of Dudley when you manipulate him into hitting you, crying, then saying you'll tell Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon -- especially when there are one of the local housewives around to swear up and down I hadn't done anything wrong, you should have this boy keep in a firmer hand, Petunia, Vernon," she added in a falsetto voice that made Ron snigger and Hermione shakes her head.

"Oh, Harry. I hope you haven't abused him too much? Yes, I know your cousin is not a nice person, but it's not really his fault, is it?"

Harry shrugged. "I don't think getting a third of his hoard of sweets, a library card and the right to play with some of his toys abusing the situation too much. And I know, Hermione, I know. Dudley wasn't half-bad toward the end," he murmured, closing his eyes and trying not to remember the last time he had seen his adult cousin. "Not much change outside of that, however. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon are still the same -- well, perhaps Uncle Vernon is a little sourer due to having to actually spend money on clothing me -- a girl can't decently wear Dudley's castoffs, what will the neighbors say?"

"And the short hair?" Hermione asked, gesturing at the uneven cut of Harry's hair. They barely reached the little girl's shoulders.

Harry grimaced. "Ah, that? I cut them myself. Aunt Petunia is trying to make me grown them so I’d be more ‘girly’ but I don't like it the slightest, so whenever I can grab scissors..." he trailed off. "Though I admit I'm not very good at it. You think you could give me a hand to even them?"

"Once we're in Hogwarts, I'll see what I can do," Hermione nodded.

"What about you, 'Mione? Anything different for you?" Ron asked.

Hermione gave a short, bitter laugh. "Me? Oh, asides of having gained a sister I certainly didn't have before --"

"WHAT?" came the twin cry from both Harry and Ron. "There is another like you?"

"-- I've learned there are worse things than being a 'teacher pet'."

"Such as?" Harry asked warily.

"Being black _and_ a 'teacher pet'," Hermione replied grimly. Harry winced. Ah. That might explain the extra hedge. The wizarding world discriminated on magical lineage, not race -- or at least, not yet -- but in the Muggle world? Being a smart colored girl must have been hell. "Though compared to the slurs used by pureblood supremacists and living on the run, facing off a bunch of school bullies was like a walk in the park."

"I bet," Ron mumbled. "So... a sister? She's a witch too?"

"I don't think so," the dark skinned witch shook her head. "I mean, I haven't noticed her doing anything hinting she had magic so far, so it's safe to assume she's a Muggle. But let's not talk about her now. As I said, we need to list off the differences in this timeline and ours..."

There was a polite knock at the door. The three girls exchanged a look before Hermione lifted her wand and cancelled the charm holding it closed. A girl with round cheeks passed her head by the door, looking uncertain.

"Excuse me, you, you wouldn't happen to have seen a toad? I lost him..."

"Well, that's one for the top of the list," Ron muttered, as the trio decided what to do with the apparition of a female Neville Longbottom.


End file.
